I want the arduino to know when a person is talking. I can have sensors on the person's body which I think will be needed. I'm currently thinking of analog resistive bend sensors or a magnet with a hall effect sensor.

"Pete, it's a fool (who) looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." Ulysses Everett McGill.Do not send technical questions via personal messaging - they will be ignored.I speak for myself, not Arduino.

PeterH

I've got fans generating a lot of noise. so that is not going to work.

What's the purpose of knowing when they're speaking? This might give a clue to sensible ways to achieve it. For example, if you ultimately want to hear what was said, perhaps a throat mike or noise canceling mike would make sense.

I've got fans generating a lot of noise. so that is not going to work.

What's the purpose of knowing when they're speaking? This might give a clue to sensible ways to achieve it. For example, if you ultimately want to hear what was said, perhaps a throat mike or noise canceling mike would make sense.

Can you please tell me where to get a noise cancelling mic and throat mics too?

Edit: I googled them. They are not available in India and are very expensive.

A noise-canceller is usually two mics, mounted back-to-back, with one facing the speaker and the other facing outwards.

Throat mics? Never seen them for sale at the usual distributors.Defence surplus? Aircraft comms specialists? (Plantronics etc)

"Pete, it's a fool (who) looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." Ulysses Everett McGill.Do not send technical questions via personal messaging - they will be ignored.I speak for myself, not Arduino.

Olympus 145031 Noise-Cancellation Microphone (ME-12) Digital voice recorders provide great solutions for voice recognition applications, however background noise will sometimes cause a problem. The ME-12 plugs into your digital recorder's 3.5mm microphone jack for uni-directional recording in high-noise environments. It will cut down on much of the background noise and result in a more accurate transcription.

Ok, guys throat mics and noise cancellation mics are off because (1) They are not easily available in India (2)They are too expensive for my budget (3)I don't think arduino can do voice processing very well.

PeterH

The microphones being suggested are the ones that give you the best chance of success. If those are not available to you, you could try using a plain old cheap mic but don't be surprised if the results are unusable in a noisy environment.

It is possible to buy voice activated recorders for less than the cost of a standard Arduino, and I think this would give you the cheapest solution. I don't suppose any of these cheap recorders would come with throat mics or noise cancelling mics, but you might conceivably find one with support for an external mic. If not, you could consider breaking in to the connection to the internal mic and looking for a way to connect an external mic instead.